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My Nurse-McCaw theory is this:
1. Nurse sees this team as only having 3 true ballhandlers: Lowry, Fred and McCaw (even though Davis, Norm and Siakam can arguably function as ballhandlers)
2. He likes having at least 2 ballhandlers on the floor most of the time, especially on closing time.
3. If you need to have 2 out of Fred/Lowry/McCaw on the floor all the time, that by default will yield a lot of minutes to all of them, especially when there are injuries. That explains not only the inflated McCaw minutes everyone is pissed about, but also Lowry's (who currently leads the NBA in minutes) and Fred's (6th highest league-wide)

They say the modern game is positionless and he's an experimental coach, but this is one positional dogma he's hanging on to. That's concerning to me for different reasons: McCaw's minutes should go down because it's taking minutes away from better players, and Lowry's should go down because he's older and we want to conserve him for the playoffs. Fred's are probably okay, but if he's 6th leaguewide you gotta wonder if that usage/minutes is too high too.

It's almost like the team is short of "ballhandlers" (as defined by Nurse and his system), hence they're all getting heavy minutes. So I'd venture to guess if there were to be a move at the deadline it would be for another "Nurse ballhandler". I just hope that if that's case, the trade yields a net increase in talent and/or a pick, rather than a move to just fix an artificial shortage of ballhandlers.

2019 NBA Champions. Glad to have doubted the doubters.

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It's almost like the team is short of "ballhandlers" (as defined by Nurse and his system), hence they're all getting heavy minutes. So I'd venture to guess if there were to be a move at the deadline it would be for another "Nurse ballhandler". I just hope that if that's case, the trade yields a net increase in talent and/or a pick, rather than a move to just fix an artificial shortage of ballhandlers.

Believe this to be the case. We're starting both of our point guards. And TD hasn't earned (and rightfully so) the ability to run the offense yet. So this leave McCaw as our 3rd PG. We could play pascal as a defacto point guard with the 2nd unit but then we would have to stagger his minutes and lose alot of the starting unit fire power. Hopefully we can pick up a true 3rd PG in the buyout market and we don't have to see so much of patrick

To be the champs you got to beat the champs

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Believe this to be the case. We're starting both of our point guards. And TD hasn't earned (and rightfully so) the ability to run the offense yet. So this leave McCaw as our 3rd PG. We could play pascal as a defacto point guard with the 2nd unit but then we would have to stagger his minutes and lose alot of the starting unit fire power. Hopefully we can pick up a true 3rd PG in the buyout market and we don't have to see so much of patrick

Yep. Either that or Nurse adapts and adjust his rotation to fit the roster we have. Ideally, both McCaw's and Lowry's minutes would go down (for different reasons of course)

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My Nurse-McCaw theory is this:
1. Nurse sees this team as only having 3 true ballhandlers: Lowry, Fred and McCaw (even though Davis, Norm and Siakam can arguably function as ballhandlers)
2. He likes having at least 2 ballhandlers on the floor most of the time, especially on closing time.
3. If you need to have 2 out of Fred/Lowry/McCaw on the floor all the time, that by default will yield a lot of minutes to all of them, especially when there are injuries. That explains not only the inflated McCaw minutes everyone is pissed about, but also Lowry's (who currently leads the NBA in minutes) and Fred's (6th highest league-wide)

They say the modern game is positionless and he's an experimental coach, but this is one positional dogma he's hanging on to. That's concerning to me for different reasons: McCaw's minutes should go down because it's taking minutes away from better players, and Lowry's should go down because he's older and we want to conserve him for the playoffs. Fred's are probably okay, but if he's 6th leaguewide you gotta wonder if that usage/minutes is too high too.

It's almost like the team is short of "ballhandlers" (as defined by Nurse and his system), hence they're all getting heavy minutes. So I'd venture to guess if there were to be a move at the deadline it would be for another "Nurse ballhandler". I just hope that if that's case, the trade yields a net increase in talent and/or a pick, rather than a move to just fix an artificial shortage of ballhandlers.

I agree with this theory.. and that's why I think Masai needs to start shopping for legit backup PG's before the deadline. My preferred guy would be Ish Smith. Plays on a bad team, and has a really good contract. Tomas Satoransky from Chicago would be another.

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I agree with this theory.. and that's why I think Masai needs to start shopping for legit backup PG's before the deadline. My preferred guy would be Ish Smith. Plays on a bad team, and has a really good contract. Tomas Satoransky from Chicago would be another.

Satoransky would be a great pickup. He can shoot and guard 3 positions. Sounds like a Nurse guy. A few years back, every time John Wall got injured and the Wiz inserted Sato into the starting lineup, they always went on a bit of run. Probably says more about Wall than Sato, but at least he's shown himself to be a solid NBA multi-position guard.

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I agree with this theory.. and that's why I think Masai needs to start shopping for legit backup PG's before the deadline. My preferred guy would be Ish Smith. Plays on a bad team, and has a really good contract. Tomas Satoransky from Chicago would be another.

Yeah, inthepaint makes a good point. As much as we don't like to admit it, McCaw quite possibly is our 3rd best dribbler. And Nurse puts a super-high premium on ball-handling. Unfortunately, the drop-off from Lowry/FVV to McCaw is like: {insert your analogy here}

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I’ve sometimes wondered whether Masai has an agenda and is like, Nick, I need you to play this guy, I believe in this guy.

Or...

perhaps Nick is super adamant about running a system with another ball-handler (obviously he is) and in spite of McCaw’s glaring weakness, is trying to force Masai’s hand to go out and get him a better one so his system can be at full strength.

Cause the weird part is it just keeps not working and not working and not working, so you start to really wonder what’s going on underneath the surface.